Commentators, politicos, and reporters who follow campaigns love numbers. Hence all the chatter in the wake of the Iowa caucuses about the roughly $120 million that was spent by all the candidates and their related PACs, and the roughly 110,000 people — record-low turnout — who braved the historic negative-30 degree windchill to participate.
Those who have a calculator will opine as to whether the whole thing was worth almost $1,100 per caucus-goer. Given the chance, we will even remind everyone that Iowa has 99 counties, that Vivek Ramaswamy visited each one at least twice, and for all that received only about 43 voters per county.
But this is my favorite number from the 2024 Iowa caucus: 2,335.
That is the margin between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ second place, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s third. Those 2,335 are probably former President Donald Trump’s favorite people in the entire country right now.
That’s because they, as much as the 56,000 who actually voted for him, may well have guaranteed Trump the GOP nomination.
Donald Trump was obviously the big winner of the Iowa caucuses.........